Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Microsoft and RDF
Microsoft once supported RDF as a standard. What would the Semantic Web have looked like if the browser wars had not diverted that early enthusiasm? Here's the proof, a bag given to Eric Miller at the W3C in the early days of the standard development:
RailsConf 2006
I just returned from RailsConf 2006, the first official international Rails conference. It was a bust, sort of and great, sort of. First conferences are just hard to make right.
I like Rails and have spent about a month coding with it. That put me in advance of many of the sessions in terms of lessons learned. Still, all the right people were there and the conversations were worth while. The keynotes were pretty great. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to keep me in Chicago past the middle of Day Two.
No Fluff, Just Stuff founder Jay Zimmerman helped organize the conference but did not assist in program selection. It might have been better if he did. Day One talks failed to impress me at all (with the notable exception of Adam Keys' talk entitled, "AC/DC, Stravinsky & Rails", which gets points for originality of thought). I poked at Adam during his talk a bit because he inadvertantly projected his notes beforehand and I read them off the screen. Sorry, Adam, if you are reading this. I couldn't help myself. You still got the laugh you were after, perhaps more so, so no harm done.
I only learned something really valuable in one session (Justin Gehtland's talk on Streamlined). Scott Raymond's Day Two talk on lessons learned from a Rails deployment was interesting, especially his concept that software development methodologies ignore the third leg of Vitruvius' Triangle, venustras, but that had little to do with Rails.
Martin Fowler, always an interesting speaker, gave a solid keynote on the first evening. He noted the failure of software systems to deliver every feature demanded (what I would call a "100% solution") and actively promoted smaller, more focused systems like Rails (which Martin labeled "postmodernist software"). It would seem that we have officially entered the era of opinionated software and have buried bloatware. The king is dead, long live the king! We certainly don't need another EJB in the world. Martin went on to opine that the combination of different patterns written in different speciality platforms will be important. Since Rails has yet to hit large enterprises, it will be interesting to see how this is handled in practice. There is room for both research and trial in that field!
Paul Graham gave the after-dinner keynote on Friday. It was interesting to see him in person. He was intense, smart and very, very worried. He was preparing his keynote while the band set up, stealing all the attention and making lots of noise. I took his picture, which he noticed. I told him, "I didn't take your picture because you are famous, I took it because you are famous, rich and successful and yet still look miserable." He complained about the band and opened his keynote with the story. That's my life - subtly influencing the rich and famous. It is a fun, if questionable, niche. Paul's keynote was entitled, "The Power of the Marginal" and suggested that innovation ceases once you become well known. It was well written and well presented, but sad. I felt like offering him a job afterward.
Why the Lucky Stiff and the Thirsty Cups played the first night. Why is brilliant, but insecure. He peppered his hard rock-'n-roll with Flash vignettes and obfuscated Ruby code. He has so much talent and seems to have built his sound effects devices himself. One of the attendees told me he once saw him recompile a Linux kernel device driver for his gear *during a concert*. That rocks, regardless of the music.
I like Rails and have spent about a month coding with it. That put me in advance of many of the sessions in terms of lessons learned. Still, all the right people were there and the conversations were worth while. The keynotes were pretty great. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to keep me in Chicago past the middle of Day Two.
No Fluff, Just Stuff founder Jay Zimmerman helped organize the conference but did not assist in program selection. It might have been better if he did. Day One talks failed to impress me at all (with the notable exception of Adam Keys' talk entitled, "AC/DC, Stravinsky & Rails", which gets points for originality of thought). I poked at Adam during his talk a bit because he inadvertantly projected his notes beforehand and I read them off the screen. Sorry, Adam, if you are reading this. I couldn't help myself. You still got the laugh you were after, perhaps more so, so no harm done.
I only learned something really valuable in one session (Justin Gehtland's talk on Streamlined). Scott Raymond's Day Two talk on lessons learned from a Rails deployment was interesting, especially his concept that software development methodologies ignore the third leg of Vitruvius' Triangle, venustras, but that had little to do with Rails.
Martin Fowler, always an interesting speaker, gave a solid keynote on the first evening. He noted the failure of software systems to deliver every feature demanded (what I would call a "100% solution") and actively promoted smaller, more focused systems like Rails (which Martin labeled "postmodernist software"). It would seem that we have officially entered the era of opinionated software and have buried bloatware. The king is dead, long live the king! We certainly don't need another EJB in the world. Martin went on to opine that the combination of different patterns written in different speciality platforms will be important. Since Rails has yet to hit large enterprises, it will be interesting to see how this is handled in practice. There is room for both research and trial in that field!
Paul Graham gave the after-dinner keynote on Friday. It was interesting to see him in person. He was intense, smart and very, very worried. He was preparing his keynote while the band set up, stealing all the attention and making lots of noise. I took his picture, which he noticed. I told him, "I didn't take your picture because you are famous, I took it because you are famous, rich and successful and yet still look miserable." He complained about the band and opened his keynote with the story. That's my life - subtly influencing the rich and famous. It is a fun, if questionable, niche. Paul's keynote was entitled, "The Power of the Marginal" and suggested that innovation ceases once you become well known. It was well written and well presented, but sad. I felt like offering him a job afterward.
Why the Lucky Stiff and the Thirsty Cups played the first night. Why is brilliant, but insecure. He peppered his hard rock-'n-roll with Flash vignettes and obfuscated Ruby code. He has so much talent and seems to have built his sound effects devices himself. One of the attendees told me he once saw him recompile a Linux kernel device driver for his gear *during a concert*. That rocks, regardless of the music.
Monday, June 19, 2006
Comparing Mapquest and Google Maps
I have used MapQuest for a long while (in Internet terms), but thought I would give Google Maps a try. The result? An extra hour from Columbus, OH to Chicago, an extra hour from my parents house to Columbus and an extra hour from my house to my parents. Yuck! I think they took the Beta marker off a bit soon.
Both routes and times on route were off. I can generally beat or match MapQuest times as it is. Perhaps the Google Maps time algorithm thinks I'm traveling with my wife and kids...
Both routes and times on route were off. I can generally beat or match MapQuest times as it is. Perhaps the Google Maps time algorithm thinks I'm traveling with my wife and kids...
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Jim Hendler to Move to RPI in 2007
Saturday, June 03, 2006
Secret of the Code
B and I saw The Da Vinci Code movie tonight. Unlike seemly most others, I thoroughly enjoyed it. But then, we had both read the book and therein lies the movie's secret.
Ron Howard is a very, very good director. The photography was superb and Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou did solid jobs as the leads. Most criticism has stemmed from the inability to condense the weighty novel onto the big screen. My supposition is that they didn't really try.
The movie would be confusing and fragmented to those who had never read the book. Then again, over 45 million people have read the book. Isn't that a market in its own right? I suggest that the movie was aimed at the proven audience who had read the book, who understood it already and who would like to add Hollywood-style visuals and special effects to their experience of the story. That certainly worked for me.
Ron Howard is a very, very good director. The photography was superb and Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou did solid jobs as the leads. Most criticism has stemmed from the inability to condense the weighty novel onto the big screen. My supposition is that they didn't really try.
The movie would be confusing and fragmented to those who had never read the book. Then again, over 45 million people have read the book. Isn't that a market in its own right? I suggest that the movie was aimed at the proven audience who had read the book, who understood it already and who would like to add Hollywood-style visuals and special effects to their experience of the story. That certainly worked for me.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
Two Types of Yoga
My friend Mark recently told me that there are two types of yoga. I present them here for your edification:
I wish (Oh, how I wish!) that I could take credit for these, but they were forwarded from Mark via a South African mailing list. Unfortunately, they were ungoogleable, so I served them. We wouldn't want them to be lost to posterity! Please comment if you know who should get attribution.
Yoga from India:
Yoga from Horsetralia:
I wish (Oh, how I wish!) that I could take credit for these, but they were forwarded from Mark via a South African mailing list. Unfortunately, they were ungoogleable, so I served them. We wouldn't want them to be lost to posterity! Please comment if you know who should get attribution.
Friday, May 19, 2006
New Semantic Web Activity Lead at W3C
Eric Miller has announced his imminent departure from the World Wide Web Consortium as Semantic Web Activity Lead. Eric has been Activity Lead for the last five years and was instrumental in producing the core technical infrastructure standards (RDF, RDFS and OWL). He has recently directed the formation of working groups to work on rules interchange and life sciences, as well as continuing SemWeb deployment work. The 2006 Semantic Web Activity Proposal summarizes the state of the Activity and future plans. Eric is rumored to be heading for a more hands-on development role somewhere in the SemWeb space.
Ivan Herman will take over the role of Activity Lead in July.
I am pleased to call both men friends and wish them well as they change roles.
Ivan Herman will take over the role of Activity Lead in July.
I am pleased to call both men friends and wish them well as they change roles.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
OWL-DL Ontology of Software Engineering Concepts
I have created a simple OWL-DL ontology of software engineering concepts and posted them on my UQ site.
Monday, May 15, 2006
A Big Week for the SemWeb
This has been a busy week for the Semantic Web. Some of items of interest:
TopQuadrant has released a new SemWeb ontology editor (implemented as an Eclipse plug-in) called Top Braid Composer. There is a free evaluation, but a commercial license. The differentiator from Protégé and SWOOP seems to be a greater attempt at visualization.
The Semantic Web and Multimedia Group, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche, Italy, released version 0.4 of DBin, a P2P/SemWeb project for "building Semantic Web communities". The project is under the GPL.
Mark Birbeck has posted his presentation on RDFa for XTech 2006. RDFa (formerly known as the less Googleable RDF/A) is an up-and-coming way to represent metadata in XML, especially XHTML, documents.
Alistair Miles has posted his paper on the requirements for the standardization for SKOS.
Tim Berners-Lee has made public his final draft report on the MIT-W3C DAML program. In the conclusion, he expresses his ideas for the conditions necessary to make the Semantic Web a reality. I think he was pretty honest about the challenges.
TopQuadrant has released a new SemWeb ontology editor (implemented as an Eclipse plug-in) called Top Braid Composer. There is a free evaluation, but a commercial license. The differentiator from Protégé and SWOOP seems to be a greater attempt at visualization.
The Semantic Web and Multimedia Group, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche, Italy, released version 0.4 of DBin, a P2P/SemWeb project for "building Semantic Web communities". The project is under the GPL.
Mark Birbeck has posted his presentation on RDFa for XTech 2006. RDFa (formerly known as the less Googleable RDF/A) is an up-and-coming way to represent metadata in XML, especially XHTML, documents.
Alistair Miles has posted his paper on the requirements for the standardization for SKOS.
Tim Berners-Lee has made public his final draft report on the MIT-W3C DAML program. In the conclusion, he expresses his ideas for the conditions necessary to make the Semantic Web a reality. I think he was pretty honest about the challenges.
Saturday, May 13, 2006
State of the SemWeb According to Google Trends
Weeble introduced me to Google Trends, a new way of tracking trends of Web search terms.
A search for "Semantic Web" yielded some interesting and surprising results. Firstly, the search term activity seemed to have peaked a couple of years ago. Perhaps that is not surprising since that was when RDF and OWL were standardized. Secondly, the regions which lead the pack in searching for the term are:
1. Korea
2. Greece
3. Iran
4. Ireland
5. Singapore
6. India
7. Austria
8. Malaysia
9. Taiwan
10. Hong Kong
Now, I knew that the Europeans were ahead of the US, so Greece, Ireland and Austria didn't surprise me, nor did the US's absence. Korea, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong are all well-known high-techers, so that's OK. But Iran?
A search for "Semantic Web" yielded some interesting and surprising results. Firstly, the search term activity seemed to have peaked a couple of years ago. Perhaps that is not surprising since that was when RDF and OWL were standardized. Secondly, the regions which lead the pack in searching for the term are:
1. Korea
2. Greece
3. Iran
4. Ireland
5. Singapore
6. India
7. Austria
8. Malaysia
9. Taiwan
10. Hong Kong
Now, I knew that the Europeans were ahead of the US, so Greece, Ireland and Austria didn't surprise me, nor did the US's absence. Korea, Singapore, India, Malaysia, Taiwan and Hong Kong are all well-known high-techers, so that's OK. But Iran?
Big Brother Should Be Watched
Unsurprisingly, the news media and the US government continue to misunderstand the central issue in the domestic spying revelations I mentioned in Should We Trust Big Brother?. The real story is protecting the civil rights of individual citizens from abuses, not everyday business-as-usual.
The news media have focused on whether or not Americans object to the NSA trolling their telephone records (they don't, by a 65% majority) and the likely prospects of General Michael Hayden to be confirmed as the next head of the CIA.
However, consider the following scenario, where innocent people may be harmed for political gain.
By all reports, including the President's, the NSA has gained access to telephone call records in an attempt to track who terrorists are speaking to in the US. Let's say that a terrorist on a watch list calls a dry cleaner in New York City. Let's further stipulate that the dry cleaner is a legitimate business who is not part of any illegal activities. Lots of other people will use that dry cleaner and some will make calls to them. The NSA will not be able to assume that the dry cleaner is legitimate and so will have to analyze the second degree of contacts. Did the dry cleaner make or receive any calls from known criminals or terrorist suspects?
Perhaps our dry cleaner also services a local politician and his family. Perhaps one of them has made a call to a 1 900 service, or a brothel or just happened to use the same dry cleaner of a terrorist suspect.
Could our leaders resist the urge to use this knowledge for political gain? Surely, some will. History tells us unabashedly that some will not. The theory of six degrees of separation suggests that we are more closely connected to each other than we may think. Should such closeness be used against us, by default and without legislative or judicial oversight?
Thus, without a carefully crafted system of checks and balances (to include warrants), it is my strong opinion that American civil liberties will be damaged by the current system.
I have no objection to the NSA being allowed to do its job! I do, however, believe strongly that trust is earned and not to be given lightly. Trust, say the Russians, but verify. I have yet to hear a single voice raised to explain why the NSA should not be required to get a warrant to access, much less follow, the trail of information available in telephone records.
The news media have focused on whether or not Americans object to the NSA trolling their telephone records (they don't, by a 65% majority) and the likely prospects of General Michael Hayden to be confirmed as the next head of the CIA.
However, consider the following scenario, where innocent people may be harmed for political gain.
By all reports, including the President's, the NSA has gained access to telephone call records in an attempt to track who terrorists are speaking to in the US. Let's say that a terrorist on a watch list calls a dry cleaner in New York City. Let's further stipulate that the dry cleaner is a legitimate business who is not part of any illegal activities. Lots of other people will use that dry cleaner and some will make calls to them. The NSA will not be able to assume that the dry cleaner is legitimate and so will have to analyze the second degree of contacts. Did the dry cleaner make or receive any calls from known criminals or terrorist suspects?
Perhaps our dry cleaner also services a local politician and his family. Perhaps one of them has made a call to a 1 900 service, or a brothel or just happened to use the same dry cleaner of a terrorist suspect.
Could our leaders resist the urge to use this knowledge for political gain? Surely, some will. History tells us unabashedly that some will not. The theory of six degrees of separation suggests that we are more closely connected to each other than we may think. Should such closeness be used against us, by default and without legislative or judicial oversight?
Thus, without a carefully crafted system of checks and balances (to include warrants), it is my strong opinion that American civil liberties will be damaged by the current system.
I have no objection to the NSA being allowed to do its job! I do, however, believe strongly that trust is earned and not to be given lightly. Trust, say the Russians, but verify. I have yet to hear a single voice raised to explain why the NSA should not be required to get a warrant to access, much less follow, the trail of information available in telephone records.
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Should We Trust Big Brother?
USA Today reported today that the NSA is keeping a large database of telephone call records for US citizens, with the raw data being supplied by the large telecom carriers. No surprise there. Still, here are some thoughts on the subject:
One one hand, the limits of current technology would suggest that the NSA would probably need such a database in order to query it for the specific call records they want to find, such as those related to Al Queda, their associates or their correspondents. I can think of no better way to solve the problem, especially when queries may be made during investigations well subsequent to the calls themselves.
On the other hand, I can understand the concerns of citizens not wishing the government to attain, or retain, this information at all. Is there to be no expectation of privacy for any electronic communication? That would engender a great change to the way Americans conduct themselves, especially given the trend to use so many new forms of electronic communications channels.
On the gripping hand, can we trust the NSA and the Administration (any Administration) not to yield to temptation? If we allow them to collect and hold that information, can we trust them not to mine the data? Does not the memory of Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover suggest that we should not trust George Bush quite that much?
In any society, there are those who will gladly violate the rights of others just because an authority figure told them to. Just where are the checks and balances on executive power under that scenario?
I have to object. On balance, it appears that President Bush is willing to trade a resonable expectation of electronic privacy for a better chance (chance!) of catching a small number of terrorists. I am not. The public good is better served by refusing to become a police state.
One one hand, the limits of current technology would suggest that the NSA would probably need such a database in order to query it for the specific call records they want to find, such as those related to Al Queda, their associates or their correspondents. I can think of no better way to solve the problem, especially when queries may be made during investigations well subsequent to the calls themselves.
On the other hand, I can understand the concerns of citizens not wishing the government to attain, or retain, this information at all. Is there to be no expectation of privacy for any electronic communication? That would engender a great change to the way Americans conduct themselves, especially given the trend to use so many new forms of electronic communications channels.
On the gripping hand, can we trust the NSA and the Administration (any Administration) not to yield to temptation? If we allow them to collect and hold that information, can we trust them not to mine the data? Does not the memory of Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover suggest that we should not trust George Bush quite that much?
In any society, there are those who will gladly violate the rights of others just because an authority figure told them to. Just where are the checks and balances on executive power under that scenario?
I have to object. On balance, it appears that President Bush is willing to trade a resonable expectation of electronic privacy for a better chance (chance!) of catching a small number of terrorists. I am not. The public good is better served by refusing to become a police state.
Monday, May 01, 2006
For Fathers Only
A friend who prefers to remain anonymous has started a blog on fatherhood. I give him credit for his tagline:
"I used to think I could be a better dad. Then I reset the bar and reminded myself, 'Some animals eat their young.'"
"I used to think I could be a better dad. Then I reset the bar and reminded myself, 'Some animals eat their young.'"
Drawing Grass
Jonathan just pointed me to the Grass Tutorial, showing how an artist used Adobe Photoshop to draw grass. It is definately worth a look by anyone interested in seeing how digital art is progressing.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
Physicists Get Water to Flow Uphill
Physicists working at the University of Oregon's Linke Group have harnessed the Leidenfrost effect to make water flow uphill using only heat and a carefully-shaped surface. The BBC has the story and a video.
The plan is to harness this effect to automatically cool microchips.
Just when I thought all interesting physics was non-classical...
The plan is to harness this effect to automatically cool microchips.
Just when I thought all interesting physics was non-classical...
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
USB Memory Devices and Mac OS X
For many years (about 13) I had a low user id number on my various Unix boxes of 112. This was a hangover from the old days of Sun OS 4.1.3 when anything under 100 was restricted. I carried this uid from Sun OS to Solaris to Linux to Mac OS X because I routinely used NFS (which operates on the uid) and didn't want my systems administrators to have to change my uid on all file servers.
I finally made the switch to a high uid (above 500 - the new standard) when I bought a PowerMac G5 last year. That made switching the files from my Powerbook G4 much more difficult, but not impossible. I thought I was done.
Then something strange happened. In a seemingly unrelated series of events, my three USB memory sticks started to leak capacity. A particular 1 GB stick would only hold 40 MB, even though there were no files on it! I found the problem today. My old uid had raised its head one last time.
Mac OS X segments files on removable media by - you guessed it - uid. The file structure on the 1 GB USB stick had these files on it:
I finally made the switch to a high uid (above 500 - the new standard) when I bought a PowerMac G5 last year. That made switching the files from my Powerbook G4 much more difficult, but not impossible. I thought I was done.
Then something strange happened. In a seemingly unrelated series of events, my three USB memory sticks started to leak capacity. A particular 1 GB stick would only hold 40 MB, even though there were no files on it! I found the problem today. My old uid had raised its head one last time.
Mac OS X segments files on removable media by - you guessed it - uid. The file structure on the 1 GB USB stick had these files on it:
[macaw]$ file .*The .TemporaryItems and .Trashes directory were full of files owned by my old uid - which my new uid had no right to delete. The solution was to use sudo on the command line to simply remove those directories and their associated files (including the top-level ._.* files). Ejecting the device and remounting it showed a comfortable 976.1 MB.
.: directory
..: sticky directory
.DS_Store: data
.TemporaryItems: directory
.Trashes: directory
._.TemporaryItems: AppleDouble encoded Macintosh file
._.Trashes: AppleDouble encoded Macintosh file
Kowari is Forking. Welcome, Mulgara!
The unofficial Kowari fork is about to become official. The new name will be Mulgara, another Australia marsupial which is remarkably similar to a Kowari :)
The Mulgara Web site is partially up. The domain is obviously registered and an Apache server is responding on a Fedora OS. Check back soon for more news!
Andrae's Subversion repository is rumored to be opening for public submissions shortly, as well. In the meantime, source and binary code for Kowari "version 1.2" are available.
It will be a relief to get this project back on track given the substantial customer interest expressed since January. I look forward to participating in the Mulgara project.
The Mulgara Web site is partially up. The domain is obviously registered and an Apache server is responding on a Fedora OS. Check back soon for more news!
Andrae's Subversion repository is rumored to be opening for public submissions shortly, as well. In the meantime, source and binary code for Kowari "version 1.2" are available.
It will be a relief to get this project back on track given the substantial customer interest expressed since January. I look forward to participating in the Mulgara project.
New WordNet in RDF
The latest version of Princeton University's WordNet has been made available in RDF by the WordNet Task Force of the W3C's Semantic Web Best Practices and Deployment Working Group. The new RDF version is here.
This conversion is based on the newest RDF/OWL Representation of WordNet document, now being considered for First Working Draft status.
This conversion is based on the newest RDF/OWL Representation of WordNet document, now being considered for First Working Draft status.
Monday, April 24, 2006
China and Asymmetrical Warfare
Victor Corpus, a former Phillipine armed forces chief of intelligence, wrote an interesting peice for the Asia Times Online entitled, "If it comes to a shooting war ..." about a potential shooting war between the US and China. There were ideas of interest; (a) Foriegn military officers are seriously considering the consequences of the current US policy of pre-emptive strike and (b) America's military might is insufficient to achieve its stated goals. The latter point was made by way of highlighting American forces vulnerability to asymmetrical warfare.
One aspect of assymetical warfare was certainly demonstrated on 11 September 2001. A handful of terrorists conducted a very effective bombing raid on New York City, killing thousands. Nations, however, can also conduct asymmetrical warfare. The Center for Nonproliferation Studies reported on China's anti-sattelite weapons capability in this article: China's Space Capabilities and the Strategic Logic of Anti-Satellite Weapons
Thanks to Nova Spivack for blogging a pointer to the first story.
One aspect of assymetical warfare was certainly demonstrated on 11 September 2001. A handful of terrorists conducted a very effective bombing raid on New York City, killing thousands. Nations, however, can also conduct asymmetrical warfare. The Center for Nonproliferation Studies reported on China's anti-sattelite weapons capability in this article: China's Space Capabilities and the Strategic Logic of Anti-Satellite Weapons
Thanks to Nova Spivack for blogging a pointer to the first story.
Current Kowari JARs ("version 1.2")
Andrae's company Netymon has kindly hosted an unofficial Kowari fork in lieu of a resolution with Northrop Grumman. Andrae has posted source and binary code for Kowari "version 1.2", which is what he is calling the natural completion of the release originally scheduled for January, 2006. Hopefully this will ease the pain of those waiting for an official release.
Netymon is also hosting source and binary for a version of Kowari with Andrae's latest iTQL extension.
Netymon is also hosting source and binary for a version of Kowari with Andrae's latest iTQL extension.
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